TOPIC 1 :

BASIC HYDROLOGY

By :
Engr. Halina Binti Hamid
 DEFINITION OF HYDROLOGY
Hydrology means the science of water. Hydrology treats
all phases of water, their occurrence, circulation and
distribution, their chemical and physical properties and
their reaction with their environment including their
relation to living things.
Hydrology encompasses the full life history of water on
the earth. In a general sense Hydrology is a very broad
subject of an interdisciplinary nature drawing support from
allied sciences such as Meteorology, Geology, Statistics,
Chemistry, Physics and Fluid Mechanics.
There are two broad categories:
(1) Scientific Hydrology and
(2) Engineering/Applied Hydrology.
Engineering Hydrology includes those segments of the
field pertinent to planning, design and operation of
engineering projects for the control and use of water.
HYDROLOGY CYCLE
 PROCESS OF HYDROLOGY CYCLE

Water that falls to the ground, in solid or 1. PRECIPITATION

liquid form, including rain, snow, sleet, and
hail.
Precipitation comes from clouds, which are
formed of water vapor evaporated from the
land and oceans. This vapor condenses
into tiny water droplets or ice crystals.
When these droplets grow large enough,
and the temperature is above freezing,
they fall as rain. If the temperature is cold
enough for them to freeze, they fall as
snow, sleet, or hail. Sleet is snow that has
melted and refrozen on the way down.
Hailstones form in the powerful gusty
winds of thunderstorms, as frozen water
droplets buffeted by the air are covered
with layers of ice until theyre too heavy to
stay aloft and fall as hail.
2. EVAPORATION
This is the change of state of
water from liquid to the gaseous
phase, usually caused by the
input of heat energy.
It is controlled by air
temperature, humidity of the air
and wind speed. It will occur
almost continuously from
stretches of permanent open
water and from moist of land
surfaces.
If the ground is wet, evaporation
is direct but evaporation from
shallow water tables is also
possible. Rainfall that has been
intercepted and caught on the
surfaces of plants also
contributes to direct evaporation.
3. CONDENSATION

Condensation is the process by which water vapor in the air is

changed into liquid water. Condensation is crucial to the water
cycle because it is responsible for the formation of clouds.
These clouds may produce precipitation, which is the primary
route for water to return to the Earth's surface within the water
cycle. Condensation is the opposite of evaporation.
4. TRANSPIRATION

Transpiration is the process by which moisture is carried through

plants from roots to small pores on the underside of leaves,
where it changes to vapor and is released to the atmosphere.
Transpiration is essentially evaporation of water from plant
leaves. Transpiration also includes a process called guttation,
which is the loss of water in liquid form from the uninjured leaf or
stem of the plant, principally through water stomata.
5. SURFACE RUNOFF

Precipitation which is not penetrating the land surface will usually

run off the surface along the defined channels which have been
produced by geological processes, previous storms, or possibly by
man.
Runoff can gather in shallow depressions, or inland lakes, but
large volumes of water merge to produce rivers
6. INFILTRATION

This is the movement of precipitation through the soil surface into

the soil and deeper.
The rate at which this process can take place is governed by the
soils permeability and by degree of saturation of the soil.
The total amount of infiltration depends not only on the soils
infiltration rate but also the rainfall intensity.
Also, the slope of the land will affect the time available for
infiltration to take place flat land will keep water in contact with
the soil longer, whilst sloping land will encourage surface runoff to
develop
7. SUB SURFACE RUNOFF

Subsurface runoff is the water that infiltrates in the

unsaturated zone, from rain, snowmelt, or other
sources, and moves laterally towards the streams.
Unsaturated zone extends from the top of the ground
surface to the water table. It is one of the major
components in the water cycle. Subsurface runoff can
be expressed in water volume (or mass) per unit of area
per unit of time.
8. INTERCEPTION

Interception, or canopy
interception, refers to
precipitation that does not reach
the soil, but is instead
intercepted by the leaves and
branches of plants. It occurs in
the canopy, and in the forest
ground litter.
Because of evaporation,
interception of liquid water
generally leads to loss of that
precipitation for the drainage
basin, except for cases such as
fog interception
 THE HYDROLOGIC CYCLE ON LAND
The amount of precipitation that soaks into the soil
depends on several factors:
The amount and intensity of the precipitation,
The prior condition of the soil,
The slope of the landscape,
The presence of vegetation.
These factors can interact in sometimes surprising ways -
a very intense rainfall onto very dry soil, typical of the
desert southwest, often will not soak into the ground at all,
creating flash-flood conditions.
Water that does soak in becomes available to plants.
Plants take up water through their root systems; the water
is then pulled up through all parts of the plant and
evaporates from the surface of the leaves, a process called
transpiration.
Water that soaks into the soil can also continue to
percolate down through the soil profile into groundwater
reservoirs, called aquifers. Aquifers are often mistakenly
visualized as great underground lakes; in reality,
groundwater fills the pore spaces within sediments or
rocks.
CATCHMENT AREA
An area contributing to flow at any given point
A system that changes rainfall (input) into discharge (output) in its outlet.
Sometime, it is called a drainage area bordered by ridge, saddle and hill; it
consists of such land uses as forest, plants, agriculture, bush, desert,
swamp, housing and others.
In USA, it is known as watershed
The factors considered in determination of a river catchment boundary
include river system (stream network), topography, and drainage outlet
point.
A system which is complex and heterogeneous consists of collection of
some sub systems. Each sub system is considered homogeneous, and
every sub system is determined by its physical character, where it can be
grouped as follows:

The characters of its surface (land use and topographic),

The characters of top soil layer, and
The characters of sub soil layer.
The Cathment Model
 HYDROLOGY BALANCE EQUATION
The complete water cycle is global in nature. Many sub-cycles exist in hydrologic
cycle.
For a given problem area or catchment in an interval of time t, the continuity
equation for water in its various phases is :

Mass inflow mass outflow = change in storage

PRGET=S

Where,
P Precipitation,
(primary input and the starting point in the analysis)
R Runoff;
G Groundwater;
E Evaporation;
T Transpiration.

All terms in equation have dimensions of volume but can be expressed as depth
over the catchment. Infiltration does not appear explicitly in the water budget
equation, because it is loss to runoff but a gain to groundwater system.
EXAMPLE :

Annual evaporation was occurs at a dam is 285 cm.

Determine the daily average evaporation rates during
the year in the hectare meter per day if the dam
surface area is 1240 hectares.

(Answer: 9.68 hectare-meter / day)

11/22/2017 Souva Chattopadhyay

EXAMPLE :
A 550 hectare reservoir evaporation was produces a
40 cm by 24 hours. The increase caused by heavy
3
rains into the reservoir is at a rate of 50m /s.
Determine the volume of water infiltrated in hectare
meters in the base of the reservoir on the same day if
the water table remains unchanged. Given, 1 hectare
2
is 10,000 m .

(Answer: 212 hectare-meter / day)

11/22/2017 Souva Chattopadhyay